Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

 Comments on the Finalist

The unique framework of this performance leads the audience to turn its gaze inwards and examine every aspect and constituent element of their own experiences in viewing dance. Soloists are deeply introspective. Standing in the midst of a basic stage setting, they use extremely minimal movements to enter into highly specific dialogues with both their internal and external environments. Every single moment is an observation on a body in motion, and this builds to enormous tension, describing a stirring picture of man as caught between heaven and earth. It begins with a supercilious laugh from a figure striking a victorious pose, then progresses through vague body forms and intense exertion. Simple and pure, this piece casts a gaze on the real state of the performance and allows the plastic progression of bodies in motion to return to the place they should occupy within dance.  ( Committee member/ Wei Shu-Mei)

Jury’s Comments for the Jury's Special Award

“Heroine” has demonstrated the contemplation of the essence of art and strongly proposed the question from physical, temporal, and spatial aspects both to the performer herself and the audience.

Su, the dancer, has intense dynamic power and has created the maximum impact out of limited resources. Her continuous performance in the darkness has presented a rare visual and acoustic experience of dance.

The 60 minute long solo dance enables the audience to experience a sense of existence from the current state to the distant centuries of the future. All the details are accumulated through the length of the performance with explosive energy.

Su’s work not only has a strong personal style and unique form, but also demonstrates huge possibilities for her future creations. Whatever are the themes that she wants to explore and develop in the future will definitely become the centre of attention and expectation.

Artwork Introduction

Taiwanese dancer Su Wen-Chi and Belgium choreographer Arco Renz created   heroïne which was performed in Belgium, Beijing and in Taiwan for the Taipei Arts Festival on August 27, 2009 at the Taipei Cultural Center, theater of the Wen-Shan Branch Center.                             

The piece radically focuses on the three primary parameters of dance: space, time and physical energy, in order to create a friction between them and to tell a dramatic story through the body without the use of conventional narration. Since the piece is a precisely composed interaction between space (light), time (music) and physical energy (dance) – they are like three equally important protagonists acting out an abstract drama or what the duo call “Abstract Dramaturgy.”

An important aspect of “Abstract Dramaturgy” is the dramatic use of structures in the three parameters of music, light and dance. The dancer is constricted by a complex and tight network of rhythmic, choreographic and spatial structures, and her fundamental, physical struggle for freedom from these structures becomes an image for human struggling at large, which can take on manifold interpretations.

The dance is also a sensual reflection on perception and appearance, meditation and interference, stillness and movement. It places a body on the uncertain ground between the real and the virtual and investigates modes of perception.

The solo deals with one of the fundamental differences between Eastern and Western cultures reflected in the performing arts: the notion of vertical time and space in the East as opposed to horizontal time and space in the West. heroïne develops a different concept of time evolving vertically. Time is not a linear succession of events, but one suspended event that lasts. In a vertical space, the performer is like a sphere that she fills with energy. The performer is the vertical axis around which the space evolves, rather than moving horizontally through the surrounding space.

About the Artist

Su, Wen-Chi is a choreographer and dancer who received her MFA from TNUA Graduate School of New Media Art. Since 2004, Su and fellow dancer and choreographer Arco Renz co-created heroïne (2004). With this piece, Su confronts her own artistic and cultural background with her experiences in Europe.

Since 2007, her artistic research has shifted to combining dance with new media art, she created a dance installation Attension Travaux (2007) and a multi-media performance LOOP ME (2009), which is nominated for the 9th Taishin Performance Art Award. Besides performing with Kobalt Works founded by Renz, she has been teaching workshops in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Belgium.

Production Team

Artistic Direction: Arco Renz

Choreography: Arco Renz and Su Wen-Chi

Dancer: Su Wen-Chi

Administration: Klaus Ludwig

Production: Kobalt Works vzw

Duration: 60 min.